The Civil War News & Views Open Discussion Forum - Archive

Is this it?

Posted By: Bros
Date: Thursday, 30 March 2006, at 7:28 a.m.
In Response To: Roger Brothers-- or anyone (George Purvis {SHAPE})
Here is an interesting little comparison.
It tells me this: Even if you assume that half of the wealth of Southerners was tied up in slaves and subtracted their value The average Cracker in Alabama was STILL wealthier than the average mill hand in Massachusetts in 1860.
If you consider the fact too that the mill hand had to purchase pretty much everything he wore or ate and the Cracker got the vast majority of his from his land or his livestock and the fact that a large part of the Cracker’s wealth would have been in free range livestock (and thus probably way undercounted) then what do the numbers say?
No matter how you juggle the numbers the wealthiest part of the nation in 1860 on a per capita basis was the South!
If anyone truly wants to understand what caused the WBTS (and a lot of American politics since) let them try and answer this question:
How did Mississippi go from the richest State in the Union in 1860 to the poorest not only in 1870 but for the next 150 years?????
Even if your political correctness won’t allow you to comprehend the real answers to that question, this comparison should at least make any unbiased person realize why Lincoln was so reluctant to let the South go and why the north was so willing to spend so much blood and treasure and cause so much misery to prevent Her from going.
A comparison of the wealth of 4 States in 1860
State total pop. Total value(per.pro.) Per Capita
ALA 964,201 $556,725,646 $577.40
MISS 791,305 $507,720,484 $641.62
MASS. 1,231,066 $321,465,759 $261.13
CONN. 460,147 $151,058,835 $328.28
Note: To be consistent if you subtracted the value of the slaves you would have to take them out of the per capita numbers too wouldn’t you?
Data From: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/state.php

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